Twenty minutes passed, and then he too heard a footfall in the passage outside, and the swish of a dress. Marcia!
He opened the door.
"Don't come in. Mother's asleep."
Marcia stared at him in amazement. Then she stepped past him, and stood on the threshold surveying her mother. Her pathetic look conveyed the instinctive appeal of the young girl turning in the crisis of her life to her natural friend, her natural comforter. And it remained unanswered. She turned and beckoned to Coryston.
"Come with me—a moment." They went noiselessly down the staircase leading from Lady Coryston's wing, into a room which had been their schoolroom as children, on the ground floor. Marcia laid a hand on her brother's arm.
"Coryston—I was coming to speak to mother. I have broken off my engagement."
"Thank the Lord!" cried Coryston, taken wholly aback. "Thank the Lord!"
He would have kissed her in his relief and enthusiasm. But Marcia stepped back from him. Her pale face showed a passionate resentment.
"Don't speak about him, Corry! Don't say another word about him. You never understood him, and I'm not going to discuss him with you. I couldn't bear it. What's wrong with mother?"
"She's knocked over—by that girl, Enid Glenwilliam. She saw her this morning."